Kevin Ward's Tragic Death Heartbreaking And Unnecessary

On the list of needless deaths in sports, this has to be the most needless. Kevin Ward's violent passing at age 20 on a New York dirt track Saturday night was tragic, heartbreaking and totally unnecessary.

Boxing, fights in hockey, bean balls in baseball, auto racing, in the most difficult moments there is an unmistakable tendency among the practitioners and fervent followers of a particular sport to close ranks and defend what they see as long-held traditions fully appreciated only by them.

Aggrieved drivers jump out of their race cars onto the track all the time to challenge another driver over some perceived slight, right? It is the theater of racing, the fabric that forges personalities, paints story lines, right?

What utter nonsense.

Jumping out of a smashed car and walking amid whizzing cars, gesticulating, threatening, is insanity. Before we get to assigning blame or innocence to Tony Stewart, if you want to argue otherwise, allow me to say you're rooting for the possibility of death. And that sickens me.

On the 14th of a 25-lap race, Stewart's car slid up and made contact with Ward's car during the Empire Super Sprints series event at Canandaigua Motorsports Park. Ward's car hit the wall and spun out. After about 10 seconds, Ward got out of his car and headed toward the other racers, who had begun to slow for a yellow flag on the half-mile track. With Ward pointing, threatening, one car barely missed him. Stewart did not. His right tire struck Ward, dragged him under the open-wheel car and threw him.

"A terrible tragedy," said Mark Arute, owner of Stafford Motor Speedway and part of the famous Arute racing family.

Yet as angry, emotional as a competitor gets, for the life of me, I can't think of one reason to defend what Ward did.

"You can't," said Shawn Courchesne, the Courant's former auto racing writer who operates RaceDayCT.com website. "I think it's partly because I didn't grow up around the sport. It's not in my DNA. For so many people involved in short-track racing, it is in their DNA. Their fathers did it, their grandfathers. They grew up around it. I think you get desensitized to so many of the dangers. The danger becomes second nature.

"Since I started covering racing, every time I see a guy come out of his car, walking through traffic on the track, or running at another car that's moving, I cringe. And what you saw on that video, I've seen hundreds of times."

Danica Patrick has done it. Jeff Gordon has done it. Tony Stewart has done it. Courchesne remembers an angry racer at Thompson a decade ago reaching in the window to punch a passing driver under caution. He got his arm caught, the driver panicked and kept going with the guy being dragged. People gasped. Yet, when it was over and nobody got hurt, it became almost comic relief.

You pull macho stuff on WWE and everybody walks away chuckling. You pull it on a race track and maybe a guy doesn't walk away. Kevin Ward didn't. All it takes is a split-second. There is no defense against the machine.

"For the fans who have grown up around it, it's part of the show," Courchesne said. "It's like going to the circus and watching the high wire act because they're never going to fall off."

Until they do.

NASCAR can bring the hammer down on the Sprint Cup or the Nationwide Series. But there is no definitive blanket to cover all the short tracks across the country.

"You certainly can utilize penalties through NASCAR," Arute said. "Those penalties go across all the NASCAR tracks, but generally you just do it for the track. We've put a couple through NASCAR, but it's very rare. The tracks can set their own policies, no doubt about it.

"We've always encouraged the drivers to stay with the cars. We never got too crazy with the penalties. It was really to assist the track crew and tow trucks to get them out of there, to make sure the car isn't left in gear and rear end is locked up, to get the car dropped at the right place."

That doesn't mean every short track can't say, unless there is imminent danger, you must stay in your car while cars are moving or automatically get slapped with a harsh suspension.

Fines and taking standings points away aren't good enough.

"The worst thing you can do to them is tell them they can't race," Courchesne said. "That being said, short tracks don't like to over-legislate."

"[After past tragedy] the response has always been to make it safer, but something like this outside the car you really struggle where it's going to go," Arute said. "But the safety aspect has certainly reared its ugly head. We're going to revisit this issue and reinforce it."

Courchesne said Saturday night at Waterford fan favorite Shawn Monahan lost his cool after being spun out. On the cool down lap, he stepped in front of Keith Rocco's car, banging a steering wheel on the hood. Monahan then walked down the front stretch, doing a Hulk Hogan, pumping his fist, putting his hand to his ear to incite the fans.